The bright lights and cheer of the festival suddenly seem a distant memory as we step into the eerily lit entrance hall of the University of Edinburgh Anatomy Department in Grid Iron’s latest site-specific venture. Here we find ourselves cast as new arrivals at the Conservatoire of the Anatomy of Music, where the chilling piano melodies of maestro gone mad Gilbert Prendergast hint that something is awry.What Remains is a participatory promenade piece, with audience split into groups and rotated through a series of rooms in which they are able to experience and observe the dark secrets that lie within the sinister institution. As is typical with works of the horror genre, the fear created here is superficial and often crosses into humour. In one scene, lying in the dark in coffin-like beds, we are made to feel vulnerable, but in the next we erupt in laughter as an ominous recorded voice berates the musical inadequacies of brave audience members.The narrative is spelled out through a series of suggestive audio, visual and sensory clues that tell of the tortured existence of a man who will stop at nothing to achieve musical perfection, and his unfortunate subjects. The inevitably clunky group manoeuvres, and pauses between scenes, combined with a lack of depth and subtlety, prevent us being wholly transported into the world of the Conservatoire, but the imagination is still called upon to piece the puzzle together. David Paul Jones is gripping throughout in his intense and suitably melodramatic portrayal of the perfectionist driven to self-destruction and his musical interludes are a highlight. The venue itself oozes natural atmosphere with its echoing stone corridors, dark oil paintings and dusty grandiose architecture. This is theatrically enhanced by technical effects, inspired set dressing and the manipulation of found features, such as sculptures and skeletons, which take on a life of their own.
